Obama: Reenact the Afghan Children's Fund

Come on President Obama, please do this for Afghan kids

Women seek medical care from Coalition soldiers in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo by Tim King Salem-News.com

(SALEM, Ore.) - When then President George W. Bush enacted the Afghan Children's Fund, most Americans were still trying to get their minds around what was actually going on there.

As the invasion began, U.S. Air Force JDAM bombs leveled or severely impacted the Taliban's strongholds around Kabul, and left buildings, many of which were built during the years of the Soviet invasion, in ruins.

It was a Hell of an arrival for the Americans, and as all of this destruction and mayhem was taking place in 2002, President Bush asked the American public to aid the war-ravaged people of Afghanistan, through donations.

In fact, every kid in America was asked to send a dollar to a kid in Afghanistan. It was a strange request that led to a tragically funny South Park episode, but that is where the humor ends.

The fund was a good idea, and it made a difference, for a little while. Apparently deciding that the kids of Afghanistan had received enough help, and the program was abandoned by the White House on 1 April 2005.

Previously unviewed images of military Medcap operation to treat civilians in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Did it edge in on somebody's business? I wonder. This was a program that simply allowed people to contribute, of their own accord.

Today the needs of the people are several of times beyond what we are providing. Coalition leaders say we are there to help, but aren't the western nations responsible for helping with the humanitarian issues?

If we let the people starve, they will be all the more against our presence there.

I arrived in Afghanistan in November 2006. I had seen poor people before, and I've had my share of cold winter days, but never did I imagine the misery that these people live with every day. From there it just gets colder, and colder.

The people of Kabul have no wood, that is all trucked in from Pakistan. They have little in the way of food, and prices have gone way up since that time.

Medicine is something only wealthy Afghans buy. There are pharmacies, but sick, cold poverty stricken people walk by them all day long.

Tim King's report: U.S./British Medcap mission treats Afghan civilians

I don't remember how I got talked into it, but one day I found myself in the back of a HUMVEE ambulance that had boxes of baby formula stacked about.

I am not exaggerating when I say there were 30, then quickly upwards of 50 Afghan people surrounding the back of the vehicle, many trying to reach past me and grab the formula.

I had been asked to make sure nothing happened to the boxes of formula, but I felt terrible and only knew that the remaining boxes were all destined to other important locations. I was really glad when a couple of soldiers finally came up and backed the crowd away.

The experience left me with a clear idea of how desperate people can be when trying to secure items for their hungry, cold and often sick kids. What they need is so little, yet those longed for items remain out of reach most of the time.

Hearts and Minds

The hearts and minds of these people can be secured with food and healthcare. The video to the right shows American British and Canadian soldiers treating just under 400 Afghan civilians in an operation that at that time was referred to as a Medcap mission.

These are the types of operations that can greatly help the local people, and build faith in the mission of Coalition forces, typically and increasingly referred to in Afghanistan as "Occupying Forces".

The

Tim King reports from Kabul: Volunteers reopen Afghan Hospital

condition of the Afghan people has kept me up many nights, many. The needs of this country are not anything that most Americans could really understand.

It is cold, it chills you to the bone, and just when you think it's really bad, an Afghan child runs by in bare feet, on the snow and ice. I don't even know how they do it, I don't know how it is even possible.

Long story short, the process for our military forces to help and aid Afghan civilians is not broad enough. Red tape regulations that ban forces from using taxpayer funds for these missions also need to change.

It is about using funds wisely and thoughtfully and I think many if not most Americans would be happy to see a small amount of their expendable funds go to aid the people of this nation, and reinforce the idea that the Coalition is in Afghanistan to help.

We have to remember that healthcare is only part of the solution. There are basic things that the people of Afghanistan need that go beyond healthcare. They need gloves and warm hats and warm scarves. They always need shoes and all types of clothing, and they really appreciate having pens.

Americans need to be able to utilize the federal government and the existing forms of transportation to get these items in country.

President Obama could reenact the Afghan Children's Fund and it might be one of the only things that the opposing sides could agree with.

A great deal of relief and medical care could be, and should be, provided. This is a good faith move to simply reenact something that already existed.

Come on President Obama, please do this for Afghan kids, and let's make our time there count in all of the good ways possible.

This is the page for the defunct Bush White House Afghan Children's Fund:

George W. Bush's Afghan Children's Fund - (Closed since 2005)

There are also other links that allow Americans to contribute to the people of Afghanistan that are open and functioning:

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

Afghan Children's Fund

National Geographic Children's Fund

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Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor.
Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines. Tim holds numerous awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), the first place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several other awards including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website, affiliated with Google News and several other major search engines and news aggregators.
You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com